Broken
by darkshiptrash
Summary: They were all a little broken inside.


Title: Broken

Theme: Department of Magical Transportation

School: Hogwarts, Year Three

Main Prompt: [Event] The Quidditch World Cup

Additional Prompt: [Setting] Wizengamot

[Character] Percy Weasley

Word Count: 3101 (+10% leeway used)

The first time he met Pansy Parkinson, it was during the World Cup of 1994 when the death eaters decided to start their first attack on the innocent after a decade. Pansy Parkinson was a fragile little thing trying to hide, shivering in fear despite the fact she probably knew she was much safer than all the muggle-borns and half-bloods around. The rational side of him had told him to leave her alone, that she would undoubtedly survive, but Charlie had always been one who acted more on his heart than doing what he knew he was supposed to do. If any of his brothers questioned him, he would reply that he had seen a fragile, scared little girl who needed his help and like any gentleman, he had answered her call.

So, he defended her against a rogue death eater out there to get her because they had probably mistaken her for one of them, and she growled at him like a wild animal, definitely not feeling very grateful for saving her life. "I could have defended myself, thank you very much." She was all defined lines and fancy clothes, the way no fourteen year old girl was supposed to look like. "If you think I am going to thank you for this, a blood traitor like you, then you have another thing coming. Save your breath."

Her short dark hair swayed against the summer wind, her dark eyes glaring at him in a challenge. He pitied any man that would marry her with the idea he could tame her. Because this thing who looked like she would bite off his arm if he came even a foot close to her again was not a creature that willed to be tamed.

Shaking his head, he chuckled. "I didn't save your life for a gratitude," he informed her, then dragged her to safety by arm, which he was half regretting already.

"If you touch me again, I will be sure to hex you until you are crawling on the floor, begging for mercy."

"I don't see how you could. You don't have a wand per law, while I very much do." He looked around, smugly demonstrating that he did in fact have a very much workable wand. Parkinson grunted in an annoyance, rolling her eyes at him. "Anyway, you should be safe enough here. Just be sure to stay here until it all calms down, alright?"

"You are just going to leave me here?" She sounded outraged, disbelieving even.

"Believe it or not, Parkinson, but I have a family to protect. You aren't my first priority." He started off on his feet then, ready to leave her to head back to his own family.

"Why did you save me? Surely, you already knew who I was, what sort of family I belonged to," she suddenly asked, sounding more fragile than he had heard her sound in those past few minutes.

"I did." He nodded his head, glancing back at her once again. "I don't know about anybody else, but I would have never been able to live with myself knowing I ignored a scared little girl's pleas." Her dark eyes widened, and he chuckled, patting her dark head lightly, uncertainly. "Don't get yourself killed out there, Parkinson. You would be putting my efforts to keep you safe to a waste then."

She glared at him, slapping his hand away. "I can take care of myself," She growled back, her mouth shifting into a deep frown. Shaking his head, Charlie stalked away, leaving her all alone in the darkness of the night as he apparrated into nothingness, back to his family home.

* * *

It wasn't well until the war was fully over that he'd seen her again. It was after Draco Malfoy's trial at the Wizengamot that Charlie had been forced to attend because, well, he had been assigned to get his brother's two best friends back home after they were finished testifying for the boy. The whole thing, how awfully willing all those people were to put a seventeen year old boy to Azkaban where even the strongest of the people went criminally insane put a really bad taste in his mouth. The whole war had started because there were too many people who had a really awful prejudice against those poor Slytherin bastards anyway. They may not have seen a problem with it, but he always did. You can't just complain about the prejudice they held towards you while also harboring a prejudice against them due to the color of the tie they wore back at school. That was just hypocritical behavior.

It was exactly why so many people were willing to join Lord Voldemort when he had first proposed the idea of a world where they no longer had to live with such prejudice. They felt like they had been wronged. So, they did something about it. It didn't excuse their actions — thousands of innocent lives were lost at their hand — but he understood that they felt like they were doing the right thing. It was quite a problematic problem, honestly, the way people pretended as if death eaters only consisted of Slytherins when he could name countless people who belonged to other houses.

Charlie sighed, waiting for Hermione and Harry to finish their little talk with the boy, lighting up a cigarette. "You are not supposed to smoke here, don't you know?" It was a familiar voice he remembered from all those years ago when he was twenty two. Pansy Parkinson walked towards him with a clandestine little smile, dressed to impress a crowd.

Charlie shrugged. "Excuse me if I don't give a damn about a rule that people who are all too willing to sentence a boy to the death enforced."

Pansy chuckled like he genuinely surprised her. "I knew there was something about you I liked."

"Don't get me wrong, Pansy, but you haven't exactly given me an impression that you like me."

She shrugged with a small giggle. "What can I say? A lady can't give all of her secrets at the first meeting." There was something thoughtful about her look, something shifting. "You are a good man, Charles. One of the few genuinely good people I've met. I don't think I ever told you that."

"My name is Charlie."

Pansy rolled her eyes. "There's no way I am calling you that, Charles." The door opened, revealing Harry Potter and Hermione walking out of the room side by side. There was something guarded about Hermione's look, as if she was forcing herself to appear fine, but was on the edge of breaking down right at that moment.

Pansy shifted on her spot, forcing a very uncharacteristic smile on her face. "I will see you around then, Charles." Having said that, she walked into the room, completely ignoring both Harry and Hermione, and shut the door after her.

Harry gave him a curious look. "Since when are you so close to Pansy Parkinson?"

He chuckled, shaking his head. "I am not." He said, "Shall we head back home?"

They nodded their heads. "Are you driving?" Hermione asked.

"I was thinking we should take the Knight Bus to travel back home." To Harry's horrified look, Charlie chuckled. "Come on, Harry, give them another try. They're quite thrilling, really."

Harry stared. "Are you making fun of me right now?"

"What made it obvious? Come on, we are taking a portkey. They traveled to France this morning. Something about how they needed a good vacation after everything that happened, but if anyone asks, I didn't tell you and you two are completely unaware. I was supposed to drag you two completely oblivious there."

Harry laughed. "Of course, Charlie." He said, then three of them ran out of the building and towards the Diagon Alley where he would get them a portkey. He couldn't wait. He absolutely loved traveling by portkey. In his opinion, they were the best way of traveling around the world.

* * *

"When I said I shall see you around here, Weasley, I didn't mean so soon after our last meeting," Pansy growled, frustrated as she sat down next to him by the bar. They were in a muggle nightclub that they had both found themselves in by pure accident.

Charlie shrugged. "Vodka?"

"No, thank you. I am not getting drunk. You may take advantage of me." She seemed to consider that for a second. "No, with how proper and gentlemanly you are, you will probably refuse any of advances I may make towards you in my drunken state and get me home safely."

"You will prefer to be taken advantage of?" He arched an eyebrow. She rolled her eyes, drowning the glass of a nonalcoholic cocktail the bartender had prepared for her. "Why are you here?"

"I am here with friends. Well, I was here with friends, but Daphne disappeared somewhere with some guy she met at the dance floor and Theodore is arguing with Luna Lovegood about whether nargles exist or not. From the look of it, she is winning their argument." She seemed like she wished to look at anything but at them in the room. At his questioning look, she explained, "Look, Theodore loves nothing more than a good argument. It's like flirting with him. If you think you are making him loathe you by arguing, then you are wrong. The more impossible you are to argue with, the more likely he is going to decide he liked you."

"I've heard Malfoy is getting released."

There was genuine happiness at the mention of the boy's name. "He is doing voluntary work in muggle London. Hermione Granger is supposed to be his supervisor." It was apparent she didn't think too highly of that. "That will go down so well."

Suddenly, she shifted on her seat, turning her head towards a tall, brown-haired guy walking towards her. "Theodore, you're done arguing — excuse me, bantering with Loony Lovegood? Is she really the one, the one to finally refuse your charm?"

"Please, who do you think I am? I am meeting her to look for nargles tomorrow morning. Apparently, it's supposed to be an inspiring and fulfilling adventure full of fun stuff. I don't exactly buy it, but I somehow found myself being pulled into agreeing to it and I am yet to regret my decision."

"Are you ready to go then?"

Theodore nodded his head. "What about Daphne?"

"She's Daphne. She will do just fine."

Theodore Nott glanced at him, putting on his most charming smile, "And who's this fellow?"

Pansy rolled her eyes. "This is Charles Weasley."

"It's Charlie, actually," He corrected her for the second time since they'd met in the Wizengamot building.

"And I shall see you later, Charles. Theodore and I have to go, or he will pull some mean prank on someone because he is bored and we will be thrown out of this club. I don't know about you, Theodore, but I'd rather leave on my own terms." She glared at Nott when she said that, which probably meant such an incident had happened more than a few times.

He would get along with the twins. Except there was only George left. George who refused to come out of his room even for food, George who no longer looked like the cheerful, ever happy brother he used to know be his childhood.

Charlie needed a stronger drink. "I'll see you around, Pansy."

"Maybe not too soon. I've had enough of your ginger hair this week." He chuckled and watched her leave with her friend, drowning his drink.

* * *

The next time he saw Pansy, Pansy was standing on his doorstep, drowned in the rain and looking like pure hell. "Pansy?" Charlie asked, arching his eyebrow. "What are you doing here? How did you even know where I live?" But the look on her face, the pure miserable way she looked, stopped him in his tracks. "Why don't you come in, and tell me exactly what happened?"

She came in, sat down in the living room and stared in the distance for a very long time, the hot cocoa he had prepared for her left untouched in her hand. "I freaked out," She said, "Today, I was at the wedding of Tracey and Blaise and everyone was laughing, having a really fun time and I just couldn't help but remember all of those awful things that happened not so long ago. Instead of laughter, I used to force myself to sleep, hearing screams in the dungeons. I was forced to torture people, because I didn't wish to be tortured myself." Tears fell down her eyes and he listened attentively, not saying a word. "Everyone asks me how I am feeling nowadays and I force myself to smile, tell them I am fine, but the truth is, I don't feel fine. I feel absolutely nothing. Every morning, I wake up to this empty feeling inside my chest and I don't know what to do, how to start feeling once again. I try to go on about my day like nothing happened, as if I still don't wake up screaming because of nightmares. I cannot go on like this anymore. It's way too painful."

He took a deep breath, looking down, refusing to meet her eye. "During the war, I was left with no choice but to kill someone in self defense. When I told my family, they all went on how I was in right to kill them, or else I would've died. Some of them even went to say it was justified. It was a death eater I killed, not an innocent someone, but the incident always left a bad taste in my mouth. The person I murdered was alive and breathing once. They must've had a family. I didn't even know their name before I was forced to run." He took a deep breath, glancing back at her. "What I am trying to say is this, Pansy, we've all become a little broken because of the war. You are not alone. You will never be alone as long as I am here. I don't know how it happened, but I've come to care for you. So, when it's hurting don't keep it to yourself, and start talking, actually dealing with everything you went through during the war."

Pansy nodded her head and fell into his arms, hugging him tight. Closing his eyes shut, he let himself in the sensation of her in his arms, this little creature that the war had broken like it had done him. Someday, they will be okay, but that day wasn't today. Today, they will let themselves admit they were both imperfectly broken and that was okay. They were only humans, after all.

* * *

It came as a surprise. Luna Lovegood, one of the good friends of the Golden Trio, decided to marry the tall, smug looking and very much Slytherin Theodore Nott one fine evening in July. She looked beautiful in her wedding gown, completely oblivious to the way people seemed to stare at her as if they thought she could do way better than Theodore Nott. When Hermione Granger asked her why she had decided to marry him, the little blonde replied with a dreamy smile, "He had a really pleasant aura." Then she proceeded to tell Hermione about the extinct species of creatures she was certain she had seen a few months ago while on a walk to a park with Theodore Nott. Hermione looked miserable, and was saved only when Harry Potter called on her. Apparently, Neville Longbottom was looking for her, seeking her help.

"Charlie?" It was Pansy Parkinson, appearing out of nowhere with his tall, four-eyed and ginger haired brother by her side. Percy looked annoyed she stopped to greet him, but then again, he and Percy had never exactly gotten along.

"Pansy," He greeted with a nod of his head. Ever since that fateful day in his apartment, he had seen her now and then in between. She always came by the floo network whenever she was feeling troubled, sometimes with gifts.

She turned towards Percy, a genuine smile on his face. "I will see you later? I need to catch up with your brother."

Percy growled, making it obvious he didn't think much of that idea. "I'll get you a drink." Having said that, he stalked away.

"I never thought nerdy, arrogant wizards who are way too ambitious for their own good were your type."

Pansy chuckled. "Contrary to men who are more in love with dragons than actual people?" She said, "You and I both know you could have never forced yourself to see me in that way even if I did like you in that way."

He remembered feeling like a freak when he thought of how uncomfortable he felt whenever he imagined being with someone like that, remembered how much he disliked it even after he had forced himself to do the act. He would never bring a girl home because he would never be able to feel the way they required him to. It just wouldn't be fair to them. "But Percy? How did that happen?"

She shrugged. "One thing led to another and before I knew it, I found myself in a relationship of sorts. It isn't a big deal."

"How are you doing, though? It's been a while since you've visited."

She smiled. "I am doing better. You don't have to worry about me anymore." Before he could open his mouth to tell her how truly glad he was about that, the doors leading to the room opened and George Weasley came bursting through the door, racing into the center of the room on a broomstick. He looked more like himself than he had seen him in months. "Charlie?" She said, looking at him with those dark eyes.

He looked down at her. "Yes?"

"Thank you for everything. I know I don't say it enough."

"You'll do just fine, kiddo. You don't need me anymore." He chuckled.

Shaking her head with amusement, she started on her heel. "I'll see you later, Charlie. Percy looks like he is going to get into a heated argument with Tracey there. I'll go and stop him before he begins to argue with a pregnant woman. Honestly, he should know better than to get in an argument with a pregnant, very angered witch."

Watching her stalk away from him, Charlie drowned his drink and left the wedding early. Weddings were never really his thing. Looking up at the morning sky, he breathed and apparated away into nothingness.


End file.
